Halifax’s history with Houdini: The naked truth

Bruce MacNab, organizer of the 2013 Houdini Seance, poses in the sub-basement of Halifax City Hall on Monday. The seance will take place in the Garrison Room at the Halifax Citadel on Halloween night. The legendary escape artist spent a month in Halifax in 1896. (RYAN TAPLIN / Staff)

It was definitely a sight you don’t see every day. Especially in 1896.

One early summer day that year, two clerks at the Queen Hotel in Halifax received a shock when they spotted a nearly naked man wandering the downtown streets.

This was a time of top hats and bowlers, ascots and waistcoats, a time when a mere bathing suit was certainly odd, if not indecent, apparel for the city streets.

The clerks called the police.

But the police knew all about the nearly naked man. The only thing is, they thought he was locked up in one of their cells.

Harry Houdini had struck again.

The famous escape artist had just slipped out of the lockup at city hall, somehow managing to bust out of handcuffs and the brick cell that was secured with a lock on the heavy, iron door. His clothing had been locked in a separate cell.

(Perhaps those surprised hotel clerks were lucky, though, because in later years, Houdini stripped naked before performing jailbreaks.)

The stunt was a prelude to a week’s worth of shows Houdini was scheduled to perform at the Academy of Music on Pleasant Street, now Barrington Street.

The shows were a flop. A small audience the first night dwindled on the second night. By the third, it had vanished altogether.

“The only people that showed up were bill collectors,” says local historian and author Bruce MacNab.

The author of The Metamorphosis: The Apprenticeship of Harry Houdini, says the great illusionist wasn’t really to blame for the poor turnout in Halifax.

The city’s press was too distracted by a federal election featuring Nova Scotia’s Charles Tupper, who was running for prime minister, to give much ink to Houdini’s show. Dominion Day celebrations that week offered too much free entertainment for people to bother paying for the magic show.

And the company Houdini was touring with, the Marco Magic Company, was seen as a pale version of a formidable show by another troupe called Markos Modern Miracles, which had recently toured in the area.

But Houdini now has a second chance to impress Haligonians.

On Thursday night, deep within the fortress of Citadel Hill, a small group of Houdini enthusiasts will gather to try to summon the legendary illusionist’s spirit.

The timing of the seance on Halloween night is no coincidence. It marks the 87th anniversary of his death.

Seances have been held on Halloween each year since 1926, all to no avail.

“Maybe this will be the year,” says MacNab. “If any spirit in the history of humanity can come back from the other side, it will be Harry Houdini.”

The man who will try to call forth Houdini’s spirit is Alan Hatfield, a psychic and spiritual medium from Pictou Landing.

Hatfield knows Houdini has a bad track record of showing up to his own party, but he’s confident he’ll get some kind of message from the Great Beyond.

“We open the doorway and usually someone will oblige,” he said. “We’re hoping Harry Houdini will, and maybe his wife, Bessie.”

Hatfield will open the seance with a prayer, some sweetgrass and then an invitation to the spirits. Those in attendance shouldn’t expect an apparition, or for Houdini to speak through Hatfield’s body.

Rather, Hatfield will use a recording device and headphones to pick up on the voices of spirits who use the “audio energy” in the Garrison room to speak.

“Spirits don’t have vocal cords like we do. They’re disembodied. Yet they can still speak.”

Hatfield says during other attempts to communicate with the dead, he has heard from British soldiers at Louisbourg, African spirits speaking in Swahili and, during a seance at the gorilla compound at the Calgary Zoo in 2001, he heard from anthropologist Dian Fossey, who spoke of the gorillas’ mating habits.

“I wasn’t there to get a lecture on gorillas, but that’s what she was doing,” Hatfield said.

Before the seance, a slate of performers will keep the audience entertained. There will be a short talk by MacNab about Houdini’s visit to the Maritimes and shows by New York magician Margaret Steele, local magician Mister J and illusionist Lucas Wilson, who will escape from a double straitjacket. Singer-songwriter Laura Smith will perform Rosabelle, Houdini’s favourite song. The evening is already sold out.

With a stellar lineup like that, MacNab says, they can’t go wrong.

“If that doesn’t pique Houdini’s interest from the Great Beyond, then I don’t think anything will.”